“Not exactly a lot to go on, Charlie. Our word against his he was there at all. And if he was, what does it prove?”
“If he was,” Resnick said, “why’s he lying?”
“Someone else, perhaps, illicit assignation. Last thing he wants to do, admit the truth in front of his wife.”
“The whole of Lenton couldn’t have been at it, sir, Sunday afternoon.”
“According to my wife, who sees the world increasingly through the eyes of Andrea Newman’s novels, it’s what most people are doing any afternoon.”
Skelton knew the dangers of making the wrong move too soon. Set against that, the almost certain knowledge that the more time passed before finding the girl, the less chance there was of finding her alive, and the more likely he was to come under criticism.
“We’ve not come up with a lot else, have we, Charlie?”
Slowly, Resnick shook his head. “Sod all, sir,” he said.
Lorraine Morrison opened the door to Lynn while her finger was still pressed to the bell. Whatever Lorraine had tried doing to her hair that morning hadn’t worked; a green and yellow rugby shirt hung loose outside her jeans, sports shoes on her feet.
“Have you found her?”
Lynn shook her head.
“But you’ve got some news?”
“Not really, not much.”
“We saw the drawing last night on the news; it was in the paper as well. There must be something.”
“A lot of phone calls, yes. We’re sorting through them now.”
“Well, then.”
“Lorraine, what you have to realize, people who respond to items like that, they do so for, oh, a whole lot of reasons. Some think it’s a way to get noticed, some want to get their own back on their neighbors, others call in and suggest something stupid just for a joke, a laugh. Never mind somebody has to check them all out.”
The disappointment in Lorraine’s face was so palpable you could reach out and touch it.
“There is one possibility, though. Look, I mean, nothing to get your hopes up about, not really. But we think we might have a line on somebody. Probably only a witness, though, at best.”
Now it was clear Lorraine didn’t know what to feel and Lynn, who knew she’d overstepped the line saying anything this early, felt responsible for offering the girl something that she’d immediately taken away.
“How’s Michael?” she said.
“He went to work. Decided last night and then, this morning, changed his mind. I had to push him out of the house in the end, but anything will be better for him than moping around.”
Lynn glanced at her watch. “How about a quick coffee, then? I’ve just got time.”
There was no doubting the small look of pleasure on Lorraine’s face as Lynn eased the front door to and they started towards the kitchen.
“Michael’s brother phoned not long before you came,” Lorraine said. “I was glad Michael was out. I suppose he’s full of the right intentions, but all Geoffrey seems to do somehow is put Michael into an even worse mood.” She gestured for Lynn to sit down. “But perhaps that’s the way families are? I don’t know, I was the only one. How about you?”
“Afraid so,” Lynn said. “Just me.”
“You don’t like it?”
“When you’re growing up, I suppose it’s not so bad. All that love and attention. It’s when you’re older, when your parents are getting older, that’s when it can get a bit more worrying.” That’s when, she thought, the chickens start coming home to roost.
Joan Shepperd had woken that morning to the faint electrical sound of drilling, pushed out a hand and felt the pillow on her husband’s side of the bed, still damp. Down in the cellar which he had equipped as a workshop, Stephen was bending, not over a drill, but a plane, turning lengths of timber. On one of the shelves his old portable radio was tuned to Radio Two, Sarah Vaughan and Billy Eckstein, that song that used to be so popular all those years ago. They must be dead now, the pair of them, Joan thought, either that or in their seventies. Eighties, even. She seemed to recall hearing that one of them had died, couldn’t for the life of her remember which one.
“Stephen, do you want any breakfast?”
Very well, let him pretend he hadn’t heard. Stay down there all day if that was the way he felt. She closed the cellar door as the whine of the tool Stephen was using drowned the final chorus of the song.
“Passing Strangers,” is that what it had been?
Today, Joan thought, would be a good day for All-Bran and some dried fruit, apricots and prunes.
“What d’you call that?” Millington had asked, setting the Mail aside to lean over the book his wife was looking at so earnestly.
“What the artist calls it is Double Nude Portrait.”
What Millington could see, opened out over their breakfast table, was a middle-aged woman, not a stitch on her, leaning back in front of a gas fire, breasts sliding sideways in either direction, legs apart and one knee raised. Seated behind her and gazing down through a pair of round-framed spectacles, was this equally naked bloke with a vaguely hairy chest and what looked like the leftovers of an erection.
“Nice thing to have on the breakfast table,” Millington said.
“I think they’re on the floor, Graham.”
“I can see that, toasting themselves in front of the gas.”
“I think it’s oil, Graham.”
“Gas.”
“The tutor said it was oil; a Vector oil heater. It was the artist’s own.”
“Yes? So what else did he have to say about this? Your tutor.”
“She said it was an act of religious contemplation.”
“Um. So what’s this, down here at the bottom? Looks like a piece of raw meat.”
“It’s a leg of lamb. Or was it mutton?”
“Religious, too, is it?”
“I think it’s suggesting a contrast between the two, the one just for eating and the other …” She stopped, a faint blush showing on her neck. “I’m really not sure, Graham.”
“No, well, you’ve got it nearly right, I reckon.” He leaned closer to the title. “Stanley Spencer. Double Nude Portrait: the Artist and his Second Wife. Didn’t say anything, your tutor, as to how he disposed of the first one?”
The exterior of the Victoria Leisure Center, on the corner above the wholesale market, smelled of rotting vegetables and poverty; inside the smell was of chlorine and Brut. Divine held his identification up to the glass panel at reception and when he had the girl’s attention, slipped a copy of the drawing through the opening.
“What about him?” the girl asked, trying not to notice Divine doing his best to get a good look down her front.
“Know him? Regular or anything?”